I have a serious question. I can pick only one of these two. What will be more beneficial if I want to become a software engineer. I already know C++ and I’m learning python rn and will start ML in December. But I have to chose today what I want from these two. The translation theory is about compilers and how they work.

Is this dumb idea??

I had this random idea for a programming language and I'm wondering if something like this is actually possible.

Basically, the idea is that I could teach the compiler how to implement things in assembly.

For example, I could write something like:

teach get(x):

asm:

; assembly code for getting input

The compiler remembers that. Then later I can just write:

get(age)

and it knows to use the assembly code I taught it earlier.

So instead of the compiler already knowing what every function does, I'm basically teaching it new things by giving it the assembly implementation once.

The goal would be a really simple language to write, but where the compiler generates native assembly/machine code.

Is this actually possible? And would it be worth building as a project?

I don't know low-level programming or compiler stuff that well, so consider me a complete noob and feel free to correct me if I'm misunderstanding something.

What version control storage method do you guys use? Right now I do it locally in git and every few days make a copy in a hard drive. I only upload compiled binaries on my store pages which is fine, as long as I never upload the actual code itself.

I recently ditched github due to my stance against AI being trained on my code and replacing devs so I was wondering if theres a better way to do it besides a hard drive + my pc?

As a longtime Mac user, I've grown used to waiting years between the PC release of a game and its eventual Mac port.

But I've always wondered, how much work it actually is, how many people are involved, why it takes so long, etc.

HI all,

I work at a company and I develop and maintain a web app made in angular.

I've recently got tasked to make an in-app custom camera that could shot multiple photos and load them all at once, in order to make life easier to our clients.

After the release, the new camera works fine on 99% of devices.
There has been a couple cases though where it has been told me that some clients have problems with said camera, explaining that it "doesn't work" with no particular explanation (our clients are absolutely not tech savvy). My main idea is that the device either uses windows (the app is made to work on android and ios. Even though it's accessible from windows, it's not meant to be used on said OS as it can cause issues) or that it cannot recognize the camera due to maybe an hardware problem?

I've tried to ask our customer service if it could be possible to have our clients' contacts so that I could ask them some more info, like what device they use, I think it could help a lot to understand the problem.

But my CS said it's not possible, and they refuse to ask our clients about said needed info.

I'm pretty new to this stuff, but wouldn't it make life so much easier to just ask the client? Or is it standard practice for companies not to contact customers directly? Asking for more experienced programmers: are there usually ways to fix these kind of problems without any info on which device is actually causing the problem?

EDIT: just wanting to point out that I'm not asking about how to solve this specific problem, but just if it's a standard practice and if these kind of problems do have workarounds in cases like mine

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to automate a process where I login into a website and navigate to a reporting section and click on export.

The website only requires a simple ID and Password.

Can you please assist me ok how to achieve this ? , I have found out about selenium and Playwright but I am very new to this. Any resources or guide would be really helpful.

Thanks !!

I’ve made several Reddit posts which I’d like to export, is there a way to do this? As it stands I think the only current way is just to save the pages as HTML and then extract the content.

The only issue is I’ve noticed on Desktop web browsers the first photo in a post never loads at full quality, (so this means that saving the post as HTML will just result in a poor quality image) but it loads in good quality within the Reddit app. I messaged a Reddit Admin about fixing this but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to programmatically do this?

For instance, i am working on a email service in python but instead of using the complicated method, i am just using https (flask)

Hi everyone,

We’re a team of 5 CS students looking for ideas for our final-year project.

We have good experience in backend and frontend development and some basic AI/ML knowledge, but we're not advanced in AI yet.

We have around 4 months to prepare and learn before implementation starts, followed by another 4 months for development. However, we'll have other courses and exams during that time, so it won't be full-time.

We're looking for a project that:

- Is mainly a web application

- Is large enough for 5 students

- Has substantial backend/frontend work

- Uses AI/ML for something meaningful, without being just an AI wrapper

- Is challenging but realistic within our timeframe

Ideas I liked so far are malware detection and system failure/anomaly prediction platforms. I like the idea of AI being one part of a larger system with things like data processing, dashboards, APIs, monitoring, etc.

I'd love to hear ideas in a similar direction, especially projects that solve a real-world problem.

Thanks!

everyone on my team is shipping with claude code and i still open files by hand like a caveman. is there a real course for this or do i just watch people on youtube until it clicks. people keep pointing me at udacity, pluralsight and linkedin learning and i have no idea which of those is aimed at somebody who has never run an agent.

I’ve tried learning to code twice now and somehow managed to quit both times. Codecademy in 2022. Then a udemy course in 2023 that is probably still sitting at nineteen percent complete.

The annoying part is that I actually start pretty strong. Eleven days of doing the lessons every day and then work gets busy for a week and the whole thing falls apart.

So for the people who have actually stuck with coding long term, what are the best courses for learning to code when consistency is the bigger problem?

Right now I’m looking at boot dev, freeCodeCamp and the Odin Project. Curious which one people think is easiest to keep coming back to when you inevitably miss a few days.

I'm in my second year of college, and I started learning web dev a few weeks ago. But since AI can code a website within seconds I wonder if the job I'm preparing for will even exist in the next 3-5 years?

I know that knowing html and css wasn't going to get me a job anyways and I'm not worried about that I'm worried about the job availability in this field in general, even backend and stuff.

Maybe AI is not good at it right now but it'll definitely get better in the next 5 years, will the jobs disappear then?

Should I learn something else instead of web dev, from a purely monetary perspective?

It's not the usual "pick one programming language" question. You can still develop big apps ot such in your favorite language(s), but you must write simple automation scripts in a specific language. It has to be a scripting language, so, say Java is off the list (Though, if you write scripts in Java you have bigger problems). And also, Go doesn't count (controversial, I know, but my post my rules).

For me, I'd honestly pick Python. Bland, but it's easy and scripts don't need to run fast.

Very new to cording trying to learn c++. I have visual studio code installed. Why I try to download mays2 the package it’s says fails. I tried before and it worked perfectly fine but then I was having trouble running a code so I uninstalled everything and now that I try to do all of it again my package won’t install.
This is the message I’m getting

warning: failed to retrieve some files error: failed to commit transaction (download library error) Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

What do you do to learn concepts and new coding languages?

I’m starting my second year studying computer science and my first job as a full stack web developer. It seems like all of my classes and my job are teaching things very fast and it seems like I’m the only one who’s struggling this hard. The lectures do nearly nothing for me because I learned better by doing, but it’s hard to learn by doing because there’s 1000 different concepts and every line is something I’ve never even heard of so it’s hard to remember anything.

Please help, I’m really struggling but I do enjoy what I do know how to do

I've been a software engineer since 2003, and have been laid off multiple times. Layoffs are common with our jobs, unfortunately, I think it sucks.. I was last laid off in September 2025 and recently started a new job this July. I've been feeling stressed and worried at my new job - I think being new is part of that, but I feel unusually stressed to the point of anxiety. I've started wondering about how long I'll last and what happens if I'm let go soon (and maybe that would ease some of my stress, except for being unemployed).

I've seen a lot of posts online recently about how bad & tough the job market is, people being unemployed for a while, and people being suddenly let go (like this post).

This all makes me wonder, is the job market really as dreadful as it sounds? I don't know if doomscrolling always gives you an accurate picture. But at the same time, the job market does seem tough. Is AI fully to blame? And I wonder how the future will be for our profession. Will I have a normal (and maybe calm) software developer role again (on a good team, with a good company that values its employees)?

I’ve been automating more things with Python lately, and I keep running into the same decision.

Sometimes I look at a paid tool and think “I could probably build most of this myself in a weekend.”

And sometimes I actually do.

But then you add authentication, edge cases, retries, logs, hosting, maintenance, API changes, and suddenly the “simple script” becomes something you have to keep fixing forever.

I still like building things myself when the workflow is specific enough, but I’m starting to wonder where people draw the line.

At what point do you decide it’s not worth coding anymore and just pay for an existing tool?

Hi, I am just starting in programming and wanted to know what really good sites you guys recommend besides w3schools.com (I have heard a lot of hate for it). Are there sites that, when I want to learn a language, teach the ENTIRE language and not just the basics? What I mean by that is that it goes in depth- not just the syntax and how to write the code, but the logic. Another question I wanted to ask is: what AI can help me learn programming? ChatGPT doesn't seem very good, but I can try. Is there an AI you recommend for helping teach you programming? Not for coding with AI, but for teaching code with AI. Thanks!

Hey everyone, I’ve built a small career platform, but I don’t want it to end up as just another CRUD app + LLM API on my resume.

Currently it has:

• Resume Builder — templates, drag/drop, live preview, PDF export, AI content generation.
• AI Voice Interview — user provides a Resume + JD, an LLM generates 10 questions, and the user takes the interview through voice with basic scoring/feedback.

Since this project will be on my resume, I want to add some genuinely technical features that would actually impress a software engineer interviewer and give me interesting engineering problems to discuss. As the current resume building and AI voice interview can simply be done by chatgpt also, need someting better?

Let me start by admitting: I'm having a hard time...

I have been reviewing a lot of code by my frontend dev colleagues the last months. While this can be a tedious job it helps both them and me while making sure we follow conventions, keep our codebase as clean as possible, etc.

Now, a lof of those colleagues create more and more using AI. Heck, some even let AI do the code reviews for them. While this boosts productivity in terms of finishing stories and delivering features, it makes me worry as well. What about code quality? How do we stay "in control" when we let AI create and review everything?

And besides the worrying, it straight out sucks to review thousands of changes and AI comments (which often don't make any sense and make everything even more complicated) manually.

While AI gives me a real productivity boost when it comes to solving problems, creating prototypes or hunting down bugs, it's safe to say I have a love/hate relationship with AI and everything that comes with it in my profession.

How do you feel about this in your daily work? I'd love to read some (other) perspectives and hope to use those to shift my complicated relationship with AI to something healthier ;-)

So, I am in like high school, so sorry if the question is really dumb in advance. So let's get into it!

I have this problem where I am making a website, and I am working on the login feature of the website. I was planning to do something like check if you have an account in Discord either way, I have a massive problem because the Discord thingy needs my token and I heard sharing your bot token is like a really bad thing. So I went to AI (I mean, I had no other choice at that time), and AI told me to do something like this:

frontend (javascript) ---> discord OAuth url thingy(idk what it is) ---> discord redirects to firebase cloud function (idk what it is again) ---> cloud function thingy handles bot token and discord api checks ---> cloud function writes verification result straight to firestore database

Now, I am a beginner, so I don't know what all of this means (maybe the first 2, but anything else, nah). I also want to store data when the user logs in, something like user = {general info, clients={}}and AI is telling me to do it in the frontend?? I have heard all day long from everywhere that you should use the backend, not the frontend. So really lost, and any help would help!

also for the database i was planning to use firebase or whatever it is called since i heard it was the best

Hey everyone, I'm building an AI voice interview app and I'm fairly new to RAG. I'm stuck on the architecture and having a bit of a mid-project crisis 😭.

My current flow is:

Before interview:
Step1 : 
Resume + JobDescription
   ↓
Chunk resume/JobDescription
   ↓
Generate embeddings
   ↓
Store chunks + embeddings in pgvector

Step2 : 
LLM call is done using complete Resume + JD (and not the chunks)
   ↓
Initial ranked topic plan is created by this LLM call 

Step3 : 
Before each question:
Current topic
   ↓
RAG query in our vector DB 
   ↓
Retrieve relevant resume/JD chunks
   ↓
LLM call to generate a question from these chunks

The part I'm confused about:

At the beginning, I'm already sending the complete resume + complete JD to the LLM.

Why can't I simply do:

Resume + JD
   ↓
ONE LLM CALL
   ↓
10 interview questions

and then use those during the interview this would reduce the latency too!

Why would I need RAG again to retrieve chunks before generating each question? But I'm struggling to understand how RAG can be used to add value to the project

I have to add this project to my reume and need to have confidence in my design, I would highly appreciate someone helping me figure out the architecture!

I want to know what I can do to figure out what I should learn. I think I’m interested in certain things related to cybersecurity and programming, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn in order to actually become good at them.

I’ve seen people say things like “read the documentation” or “understand X concept” but how do you actually learn? I’m asking because throughout my life I’ve learned different things about different topics, like anyone else, but I’ve never really understood how something actually stays in your brain and becomes knowledge.

For example, I’ve seen tons of information through YouTube videos, Instagram, etc. that sparks my curiosity. I know certain words like DNS, IP addresses, HTTP, APIs, Linux, etc., but I don’t really know how to properly define or explain what they are. I don’t know what I should study and what I shouldn’t.

When I say I basically know nothing, I mean that I don’t have much actual knowledge or experience in programming or cybersecurity. I do know how to install things, find my way around a PC, fix certain errors, and I’d say I’m reasonably good at Googling and finding solutions when I have a problem. But I don’t really have a structured understanding of how technology works or what I should learn next.

I understand that I need to practice and break things to learn, but I still wonder: how did professionals actually progress from having little knowledge to becoming good at this?

Could you give me some advice, please? I’m really lost.

Hello!

I'm a first year Computer Science student learning how to program. The language we are going to be learning in my class (for first semester anyways) is going to be Python and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I could practice python in my own time? Programming is something I am deeply passionate about and want to do good at, so I'm hoping I can get some help with this! :)

I’m 19 years old from Morocco, and I’m honestly very lost about what to do with my future.

I originally wanted to study programming, but I was rejected from the program I wanted. Since then, I’ve been trying to find other options, but things haven’t gone well. I was rejected from general university programs multiple times as well.

Recently, my uncle talked to my father and suggested that programming could still be a good career path for me. My father looked into it and found a private programming school that costs around 1,500–2,000 MAD per month (It's not a small amount in Morocco).

The problem is that I’m no longer sure about programming.

I know programming is difficult, and I know the entry-level job market isn't exactly great right now. I’m also afraid of spending a lot of money and time only to discover that I’m not good enough or that I won’t be able to find a job afterward.

At the same time, I don’t really have another field that I’m passionate about. I don't have a particular talent or career dream. Another option I’m considering is studying bakery/pastry at a vocational institute, but I’m not particularly passionate about that either.

I feel like I’m choosing between different uncertain paths rather than choosing something I actually want.

So I’d like to hear from people who are actually working in programming/software development:

If you were 19 today and had no programming experience, would you still choose programming as a career?

How difficult is it realistically to get your first job?

Is the current job market bad enough that you would advise a young person to avoid the field?

How important is having a university degree?

Is paying for a private programming school worth it, or would self-learning be better?

And most importantly, if you don't have a strong passion for programming, is it still possible to build a decent career in it?

I’m not looking for motivational answers like “follow your dreams.” I’d really appreciate honest answers from people who are actually in the field, including people who regret choosing programming.